Nyasaland famine of 1949
Famine in protectorate of Nyasaland / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Nyasaland famine of 1949 was a famine that occurred in the Shire Highlands in the Southern Province of Nyasaland (now Malawi) and also in a part of the Central Province in 1949: its effects extended into the early part of 1950. The immediate cause was severe droughts in December 1948 to January 1949 and in March 1949 that destroyed much of the maize crop on which the people of the affected areas relied during its main growing season. This followed two years of erratic rainfall and poor harvests which had depleted the reserves in farmers’ granaries. The effect of crop failure was intensified by the failure of the colonial government to maintain a suitably large emergency grain reserve, delays in importing sufficient relief supplies and its requirement that most of the relief provided was paid for by its recipients. The official death toll from starvation was some 200 people, which may be an underestimate, and it excludes those dying of diseases exacerbated by malnutrition.[1]
There is significant disagreement on the underlying causes of the famine. At first, it was blamed on over-intensive cultivation causing soil erosion and on growing tobacco rather than food crops.[2] Later, colonial underdevelopment through land expropriation, levying rents and taxes on African farmers and underpaying them for their labour and produce was suggested.[3] More recently, attention has been focussed to the uneven economic and social development of the protectorate in the 1930s and 1940s. This created, firstly, an increased number of employees and tradesmen, who needed to buy their food but who were dependent on the uncertain surpluses arising the system of subsistence agricultural because few farmers produced food primarily for the market rather than their own consumption, and governmental marketing organisations that, far from providing incentives for the production of maize, underpaid those farmers that did grow it commercially. In addition, a range of social changes created an underclass of those without adequate access to farmland or secure employment, vulnerable in times of food shortage: this included many women.[4]